Students get hands-on experience at Acushnet Saw Mill restoration site

Thursday

May 8, 2014 at 12:01 AMMay 8, 2014 at 8:51 PM

Putting siding on a house is a routine part of construction. But for students at Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School, it gives them real-world experience in their future field.

ARIEL WITENBERG

ACUSHNET — Putting siding on a house is a routine part of construction work. But for the students at Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School, it gives them invaluable real-world experience in their future field.

Working at the Buzzards Bay Coalition's Acushnet Saw Mill restoration site, seniors and juniors from the school have been able to try their hand at construction outside of their regular shop classroom.

"It's much better than being at school for them because they are able to get a realistic sense of what the work world is like," teacher Doug Sims said Wednesday.

He was standing at the Saw Mill site where his students have been hard at work the past few months building an addition to a visitor's center there.

The addition itself was designed by the school's engineering students, and now construction students are in their last week on the job, putting on siding and roofing as finishing touches.

After they leave, student electricians will come to the site and plumbing students from Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech will also work on the project.

"This is a really big project for us," Sims said, noting his students have also worked on sheds at the Acushnet golf course and dugouts at Popes Park.

The students come to the site in the morning and work through lunch time before going back to class.

Senior Ethan Hathaway said he "loves" working on the project because "We actually get to do real work with our friends."

"It's much different than just building a chair in shop class," he said.

Senior Kevin Coache said he thought the work gave him a "real-world example" of what life could be like after graduation.

"It's also nice to be doing something for the community," he said.

Indeed, the vocational school's involvement is what's known as "service learning." Old Colony provides free labor to the coalition's project in exchange for getting real-world construction experience.

Sarah Quintal, who is overseeing the project for the coalition, said the students' work has been slower-going than professionals but that "They have really been instrumental to us."

While the students are hard at work constructing the visitor's center, the coalition's other contractors have been hard at work deconstructing the surrounding 19-acre former lumber yard.

There, concrete dams and walls surrounding the Acushnet river have been removed, replaced by sloping riverbanks that will soon be planted.

Elsewhere on the site, large swaths of concrete have been replaced with swamps with Atlantic White Cedar and Maple trees.

"The point is you don't need to drive three hours to the mountains to be in nature," the coalition's Alicia Pimental said. "You can go get a slice at Metro Pizza and basically be right here."